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Editor 1 s Notes
Planning & Politics
Those who fear that the fix is in on Park
Avenue might have been her :ened by the
Planning Commission’s work session last
Thursday. The idea of maintaining a stock
of affordable housing got a lot of respect and
few knees jerked automatically at the need
for more doctors’ offices.
The sparsely attended meeting — half a
dozen from the neighborhood; six out of 10
planning commissioners; one city-county
commissioner — was just a step in the pro
cess of reassessing land use in the area called
“Buena-Vista-Boulevard Heights,” which
includes Park Avenue. The request for re
zoning the Handley property at the comer
of Park and Yonah
precipitated the
whole process.
Park Avenue runs
between Athens Re
gional Medical Cen
ter on Prince Avenue
and the Georgia
Power Property on
Boulevard and has
long been considered as a possibility for the
next great leap forward for doctors’ offices
and other related businesses. The block of
Park between Yonah and Easy has over the
years been bought up and cleared in antici
pation of office construction, leaving the
Handleys hanging out on the comer alone.
Now they want their property zoned for of
fice-institutional use so that it can be a part
of whatever package might be put together.
This is a truly classic land-use decision
fraught with property-value considerations,
market forces and development patterns that
may all be more complicated than they ap
pear on the surface.
True, Park Avenue lies across from the
hospital, but there’s another hospital off in the
other direction also pulling development.
Prince Avenue is zoned for various professional
and businesses uses and may not soon reach
saturation. Other nearby nodes of doctors’ of
fices have been slow to fill up. Perhaps most
significantly, the whole residential area be
tween Prince and Boulevard provides a dense
concentration of older houses that have be
come prime sources of “affordable” homes.
The fragile fabric
of the neighborhood,
seemingly a pushover
for commercial devel
opment a few years
ago, is snapping back
into a viable commu
nity that is not only in
creasingly resistant to
disintegration but is al
ready on the upward track. Owner-occupants
are banging away at nails and low-level land
lords are next door banging away, too. Al
though the area is predominantly — accord
ing to planning staff maps — renter-occupied,
many of those renters showed up at a Dec. 19
public hearing praising their neighborhood
and expressing their hopes of becoming own
ers there themselves.
If there was an issue in the last CEO race
here, it was the vague but strongly felt qual-
ity-of-life idea that people want their local
government to be willing to say “No” to those
who would pave over the character of the
town. A large part of that character comes
from affordable in-town neighborhoods
where students, young couples, musicians,
artists, business people and others have found
compatible living. Athens has followed the
pattern for years common elsewhere, of older
neighborhoods being reclaimed and gradu
ally rising toward semi-exclusivity, the route
Cobbham took and the one being followed
by the neighborhoods in the Historic Boule
vard area.
At the conclusion of last Thursday’s work
session, the planning commission asked the
staff to give them a wider view. They want
to know how much office space is already
available along Prince and Oglethorpe, what
the consequences will be for traffic in the area
if they should, for instance, make part of Park
Avenue into a kind of office mall, closing off
the rest. The Planning Commission, though
not without its own politics, is supposed to
make a rational decision about what's best
not only for the specific area but for the
whole community.
The A CC Chief Elected Officer and
Commissioners, who are much more directly
influenced by politics, will ultimately decide
whether offices will go marching down Park
Avenue, whether Easy Street will become a
parking lot; whether the young couple on
Buena Vista get to raise their children in a
neighborhood or on the fringes of office com
plexes until they give up and move to Oconee
County.
When this issue finally gets to the Ath-
ens-Clarke County Commission it will be
one of those rare votes where the character
of a town hangs in the balance
Pete McCommons
Editor, Flagpole Magazine
This is a truly
classic land-use
decision... Jfit
by Dennis F. Greenia & Pele McCommons
flTake The Train
If you didn’t need to get to Adanta once in a while to see a show
or visit your parents, you could live in Athens without a car, relying
on your feet, your bike and the good bus system. That kind of low-
cost living may become a reality if local commuter rail advocates
are successful.
. Their plans got a shot in the arm last week when a New Jersey
transportation consulting company presented a study to the state
Department of Transportation that gives Athens top priority for a
demonstration rail project that could have trains running between
here and Adanta in time to haul the Olympic crowds.
The Olympic deadline provides the impetus, but E. H. Culpepper
says the need here goes far beyond the Olympics.
Culpepper is chairman of the Northeast Georgia Surface and
Air Transportation Commission, an authority formed in 1989 and
including 13 counties in the
area. He sees commuter rail as a
natural for this area.
“It’s pedestrian friendly, it’s
bike friendly, it’s environmen
tally friendly,” Culpepper said.
“Rail passenger service is one of
the components in addressing a
lot of different problems.”
Tom Gurley agrees. He’s a
rail consultant with Jordan,
Jones and Goulding engineering
and planning firm.
“So many of my friends,”
Gurley said, “had a litde girl and
they kept her teeth straight and
they sent her off to the University and to get her to come home every
other week they buy her a better car than they have. Athens has the best
bus system in Georgia. If she had a way to get to Atlanta, she wouldn’t
need a car.”
Gurley, retired from a career in railroading, points out that we now
have two generations of citizens who have never ridden trains and two
generations of railroad managers who have never hauled passengers.
“We have an education job,” he says, “not a transportation job.”
Gurley says Athens has everything needed to make rail work, includ
ing a built-in ridership on a straight line to Atlanta along existing tracks.
Culpepper says rail makes sense for Athens and it can happen "if a lot
of things fall into place,” but “there are so many different players out
there” that he can’t predict the eventual outcome.
James L. Lester, of Augusta, Is the 10th District (which includes Ath
ens) rep on the state transportation board. Anybody interested in com
muter rail for Athens can let him know. His telephone number is 706-
722-0254; his address is 1007 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901 -1119. (PMc)
I 8 Foot Athena
The model of Jean Westmacott's Athena, the statue that will grace
the entrance to the Classic Center, is on view, along with other studies,
drawings and photographs that relate to its creation. You have to call for
an appointment at Lyndon House, though, since this is the off-season at
the arts center. Call 613-3623.
Project Athena is setting up a hotline (which should be ready by the
end of this week) to relay information about Athena to the public. That
number is 548-9999, ext. 1800. Info about any viewing hours at the
Lyndon House should be on that line. The number should also give you
information about how you can donate money to finish the sculpture.
(That’s how the project is being privately funded — by donations, of any
amount.) A wall of the ground floor of the old fire hall has been set aside
to commemorate those folks who pitch in to pay for Athena. (DFG)
——CD
Government Meetings
ACORTS Technical Coordi
nating Committee. 10 am.
Wednesday, Jan. 25, 120
Dougherty SI.
CEO News Briefing. 2 p.m.
Thursday Jan. 26. Courthouse
Room 570.
SPLOST Committee (tenta
tive). 4 pm76 pm. Thurs.Jan.
26, Institute of Government.
Morton Corporation. 5:15
p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26,
Morton Theatre.
Pianrihg Commission Work
Session. 7 p.m. Thursday,
Jan. 26,120 Dougherty St.
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